Editorial: Brown's budget booster

Consider, he came into office in 2011 -- his third term, separated by nearly three decades -- with a $27 billion deficit.

Now he's unveiled a $106.8 billion budget for 2014-15 that not only projects a $3.2 billion surplus for the next fiscal year, but continued surpluses in following years.

He took over a state where funding for K-12 educations and colleges was continually cut, where his predecessor was reduced to threatening to close state parks due to a lack of money and where public employees had been granted unsustainable retirement benefits.

The new budget contains good news for schools and parks -- though the governor is holding off on addressing the state's unfunded pension costs, said to have reached $354 billion. Brown plans to do deal with this huge issue later this year, he said. We hope he does -- though, short of directing a mountain of money toward these costs, we're not sure what he'll do. Significant reforms in public employee pensions are only forward looking. They do nothing to solve an issue created by previous governors who caved into public employee unions in granting pension packages that may have been affordable pre-2007 recession, but have become a huge liability since.

And while the budget calls for an overall 8.5 percent increase in general fund spending next fiscal year, the governor doesn't restore much of the money cut previously from social service programs, although he does direct $670 million toward the state's health care program for the poor, Medi-Cal.

Part of this is the kind of caution created by years of boom-and-bust budgeting and attendant financial crises. The governor has acknowledged that while he's projecting about $4 billion in capital gains tax revenue from a stock market that was on a tear for much of 2013, what the market gives, it often takes back.

His master stroke, in terms of restoring funding for schools and public higher ed, was the November 2012 tax measure approved by voters -- but both these taxes will expire later this decade.

Still, Brown is directing $45.2 billion to K-12 schools -- up $4 billion from the current fiscal year. Schools will also get $3.3 billion in deferred payments -- money the state took to balance budgets in previous years.

Brown's budget also delivers on his pledge to higher education -- the University of California and California State University systems would see a 5 percent increase in funding -- or an additional $142 million each. Overall, UC, CSU and the community college system will receive $1.1 billion, with nearly half the money going to community colleges, which are shouldering more of the burden of undergraduate education.

For State Parks, the picture also has brightened considerably, with $40 million in additional funds directed to pay down $1 billion in deferred maintenance costs; there's no plan to close parks or raise entrance fees again.

The 75-year-old governor shows no signs of flagging -- indeed he has become quite deft at playing off the dwindling conservative factions in state government against progressives. Since even liberals don't want to head into the 2014 elections under an umbrella of unbridled spending, they can buy Brown's relative austerity. Conservatives like his pragmatism and willingness to say no, in addition to his call in the new budget to pay down the state's $25 billion "wall of debt."

Will voters want to bring Brown back for a fourth term?

Put it this way: An improving economy and a tax measure have benefitted the governor greatly, but considering the mess he inherited, If Californians were asked, "Are you better off today than in January 2011?" so far, the answer is "yes."